


wanting and waiting

by theproseofnight



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Clextober 2020, F/F, Modern AU, cinnamon spice and everything nice about being in love with your best friend, lovers to idiots, pining exes, to lovers again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:15:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27179765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theproseofnight/pseuds/theproseofnight
Summary: All I want is nothing moreTo hear you knocking at my doorOR all Lexa wants is nothing more than Clarke, her ex-girlfriend, back. She may not have to wait long.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 35
Kudos: 564





	1. part i

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, a 900-word drabble from a Tumblr prompt, turned into a three-shot treatise on 'want', with a sprinkle of autumn magic :)

*******

“I had dinner plans with Costia last night.”

Clarke’s head snaps up. Her face falls, looking like she’s been sucker-punched. Her eyes well and Lexa has to turn away from her watery gaze lest hers spill in sympathy, even if she doesn’t understand the reaction.

“Oh.”

 _Drinks with a new co-worker_ , Lexa considers lying, giving into an instinct to soothe—downplaying to soften the perceived blow. It’s a half truth that Clarke will pick up on but will likely let slide because her ex-girlfriend never pushes Lexa about her dating life. Since their breakup a year ago it has been tacitly, painfully, off limits.

But sitting in her favourite café, across the table from Clarke who had just gotten off the phone with her new boyfriend, Lexa doesn’t feel like lying.

If she has to spare anyone’s heart today, she chooses her own.

This one time, she goes with the unspoken other half of the truth. Why she couldn’t be reached yesterday,

“It was a date.”

Giving into her loneliness and in a misguided bid to level an uneven playing field—how quickly and easily Clarke got over her—Lexa had finally accepted the advances of the new lawyer her firm had recently hired. They had gotten close collaborating on a case. Up until a week ago Lexa had only entertained the flirtations of the attractive, charismatic counsel as friendly banter. Hadn’t read much into their interactions. Although Lexa held no romantic inclination whatsoever for Costia, who was unaware of the emotional landmine she was traversing in finally asking Lexa out, the attention felt nice.

It made her wonder if the distraction of an evening spent with someone who holds no knowledge of her history would help to lighten a bit of that baggage. An unsustainable weight.

Someone who didn’t look at her with pity like Raven and Octavia did last week when Clarke cancelled on their girls night at the last minute. No explanation. Lexa ran into Finn the next day in Clarke’s neighbourhood, near her apartment. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. The second chance she had hoped to ask for walked away with Clarke’s coffee order in Finn’s hand.

Someone who could make her forget about her crushing crush on her ex-girlfriend yet still best friend with whom she remained very much in love.

Someone who could make her heart beat a different way than the stuttering of late.

When the time came to leave for her date, makeup ready, outfit on, keys and phone in pocket, Lexa almost didn’t go through with it. The rising panic at turning the door knob and stepping foot over the threshold onto a new post breakup stage had her rushing back into the bathroom and emptying out the contents of her stomach. She considered cancelling on Costia with a poorly disguised excuse of coming down with something and a promise to call in the morning. The dry heave sounds of her wretching would provide sufficient cover so that it wouldn’t be a total lie.

In the end, Lexa didn’t chicken out. She went with the rosemary chicken. Dinner was fine and Costia was lovely. The night closed on a warm hug and Lexa’s suggestion of a next time that’ll include the boys from the rest of the team too. Costia was gracious and accepted the friendship zone for what it is, leaving Lexa’s front steps with a knowing look and a sympathetic smile.

“Whoever she is, must be someone special.”

The rest of her night was spent streaming mindless movies and watching listlessly while trying not to think of soft hands and blue eyes and doorstep kisses, the kind that put stars in the night sky. Despite Lexa’s best efforts, her thoughts strayed to the original owner of the college sweater she changed into—the one item Lexa couldn’t bear to part with amongst boxes (and years) of things she had to let go.

“How’d it go?” Clarke asks, bringing her back into the present. Smile tighter than what Lexa is used to. Voice smaller.

Lexa looks down and stirs her herbal tea, moving the ginger slices around with extended purpose. When she looks back up, she’s met with an all too familiar expression from Clarke. A hidden devastation.

Clarke looks precisely how Lexa felt the other month first learning about Finn, like throwing up after hearing of her ex-girlfriend’s re-entry into the dating pool. The thought of being with anyone—in any shape or form—other than the girl in front of her makes Lexa nauseous again.

“It was great,” Lexa answers, but offers nothing more. Another half truth.

_How many halves are left between them?_

Clarke swallows thickly. Nods. Doesn’t ask for more.

“That’s great, Lex,” Clarke says, recovering, gaze softened in that way of hers when Lexa’s happiness is the subject of conversation. A quiet stretches for the infinity of a second. “All I wanted was for you to be happy.”

Lexa _wants_ to say more.

Wants to argue that ‘happy’ had been four years of friendship and four years of more.

Wants to know what went wrong and why they are broken save for the thinnest string that’s still holding them together as best friends.

Wants to ask why Clarke’s knuckles have gone white, why the grip on her coffee mug tightens, why the colour of her eyes have faded to a dimmer of the blue that Lexa has been drowning in when she falls asleep.

She wants and wants.

But Clarke doesn’t say anything.

So. Neither does Lexa.

**—**


	2. part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke's pov

**—**

“It was a date.”

Clarke knew that those words, or a version of them, would eventually leave Lexa’s mouth. She was bracing for them. Had been bracing for weeks, if not months.

It’s the sort of inevitability in the cards ever since she broke up with Lexa. That her ex-girlfriend would move on. Start dating again.

But, for the longest time, the inevitable had been a dog, a brownstone with a rooftop garden, Saturday walks and Sunday roasts. _Wedding rings_. The inevitable of an eight year love story.

A certainty that became less and less certain in the last year.

Lexa hadn’t been happy. Her smiles a fraction of their usual width, her hugs not as tight, and her eyes far from bright. She worked a lot and spent more and more time at the office than in their shared apartment.

Clarke tried talking to her. When that didn’t work—the exhaustion from work usually winning out before the end of the first sentence of any conversation attempt—she tried to give Lexa her space to process on her own. Maybe it was simply the ebb and flow of a busy career and a stressful job.

But she could feel Lexa pulling away. Even as Lexa still sunk into bed at night and clung onto Clarke like she always did while sleeping, an undeniable distance had crept in during the day and was widening by each hour they spent apart.

Suggestions of an overdue vacation had been met with kisses to her forehead and soft _maybes_ , but no firm commitment. Calls for shorter breaks—a long weekend or a date night perhaps—were answered by, _I’m sorry babe, it’s just this deadline, next time_ , and more forehead kisses.

A needed reassurance, Clarke took it one forehead kiss at a time.

It wasn’t until they were looking at a house—a modernised residence in a historic district as close to the ideal as they’ve been talking about for ages—that Clarke saw the fractures in their relationship ran deeper than what Lexa’s kisses covered.

During the open house tour, Lexa showed tempered interest and, no matter the realtor’s enthusiasm or Clarke’s input, hadn’t mustered a reaction beyond an accommodating smile. She had appeared relieved to leave the property and had been quiet on the subway ride home.

The writing was on the wall, or more like on the eraser board, when Clarke surprised Lexa at her office with her favourite pulled pork sandwich, during one of her late nights after missing three consecutive dinners. It was a lovely sight. The problem was it’d been a rare one, seldom directed at her. Through the conference room glass, unseen to Lexa and her colleagues, Clarke witnessed a smile that she hadn’t seen in a long time. Lexa must have told a joke that earned the round of laughter from the group. She seemed in her element commanding the room.

It felt like Clarke was intruding when she poked her head in. The room stilled at the interruption, Lexa’s smile faltering for a fleeting moment before her expression gentled into its usual softness on Clarke’s approach. Despite everyone’s politeness and friendly greetings, the mood had noticeably shifted as did the papers they were working on, the sounds of files shuffling with odd, sudden, urgency.

Lexa had guided Clarke into her private office after waving off a few departing co-workers and nodding confirmation to their passing inquiry, “See you at the pub?”

Any plan of a shared meal went out the window, Clarke losing her appetite realising that Lexa would rather go out with people she already sees for well over twelve hours a day than to go home.

Clarke left Lexa with the bag of takeout, made an excuse about an early morning to decline her offer to join them, then cried on the train back to an empty apartment. It occurred to her after, curled around her absent girlfriend’s pillow, the source of Lexa’s unhappiness might be Clarke.

Knowing Lexa’s loyalty and deep sense of self sacrifice, she would sooner suffer in silence than hurt Clarke by admitting she might have changed her mind about their friendship turned-into-more relationship. Might have changed her mind about _Clarke_ and didn’t know how to tell her. It had been the same silent suffering that took them four years to get together in the first place, Lexa not wanting to burden Clarke with her thought to be unrequited feelings.

“We can give it a go. No matter what, even if it doesn’t work out, we stay friends,” had been the pact. By the growing hollowness in Clarke’s chest, it seemed to be not working out.

Maybe they had simply ran their natural course as a couple and weren’t meant to be more than best friends. These things happen. For a myriad of reasons—the mundane and the monumental—some couples don’t stay together. Someone falls out of love. Or the fit is no longer right, paths are no longer parallel. The dissonance too great.

The solution then was to execute the fallback plan and to remove herself from the picture. The romantic picture, at least. Retreat into the safety of the platonic one which, despite their previous pining, was a space Clarke knew well to navigate, a ground she can tread with not nearly as much effort.

After a long, excruciating, silence following Clarke’s submission to break things off and get back to the way things were before, Lexa’s only response had been,

“Is this what you want?”

_No_. But if this was the only shred of a chance to save their friendship—to keep Lexa in her life without resentment—Clarke had no other choice.

So she lied.

“Yes.”

And Lexa didn’t fight her on it. A part of Clarke had held out hope she would. In the absence of a protest, the only conclusion is that this was what Lexa wanted too.

So, the inevitable had turned into the insurmountable. The unbearable.

Maybe Clarke should’ve fought harder, but she had done her best to steady her sail against an unseen, battering wind changing the course of their relationship. In the end, all she could do was wave a white flag and hope the undertow is kind.

Since that awful day following their separation, Clarke’s broken heart had been lying in wait for when Lexa inevitably finds someone else—finds her happiness elsewhere. In a bid to delay its further shattering, Clarke wilfully steered clear of hearing anything about Lexa’s love life and shared scant of her own.

The closest they had come to the topic was an accidental slip by a tipsy Raven ribbing on Clarke about her first date with Finn. The wine spilling from Lexa’s hand onto their game board and all over Octavia’s carpet floor was proof that Raven’s missive impacted the wrong target. It didn’t escape anyone’s notice that Lexa took a really long time to search for and come back with the paper towels to clean the mess. The rest of game night devolved into stilted silences and concerned glances from her other best friends.

Lexa remained distant and quiet.

They haven’t talked about it since. Lexa hadn’t asked and Clarke hadn’t offered an explanation. She went on pretending that girls nights with the group and weekly café meetings between just the two of them—habits carried over from college—were fine. She was fine. _All was fine_.

But Clarke knew the day was coming when the shoe would be on the other foot. When Lexa would move on.

Now, for all her efforts to do the same, hearing Lexa confirm her dating, Clarke’s world comes crashing down anew.

The inevitable comes not as the freight train she’d been anticipating. It’s not a matter of mass or force or pummelling weight. Rather, an elision of heartbeats. A soundless collision.

Her chest feels tight.

Her hands feel fragile.

The ceramic of her coffee mug is all that keeps them from shaking uncontrollably, though she benefits from none of its warmth.

Clarke has only the vocal capacity to ask how the date went and bare a smile through the answer. Then, repeat her final words of their breakup.

“All I wanted was for you to be happy.”

The conversation lulls onto safer topics thereafter. Lexa’s cases, Clarke’s teaching. What brilliant artwork her students have produced. She’s in the middle of listing the number of black crayons little Aden had gotten through for his drawing when she drops it for another, more pressing accounting.

“How many has there been?”

Clarke knows she has no right to ask but she can’t help the twist in her stomach at her imagination’s runaway scenarios.

“How many what?” Lexa replies, midway through a sip, looking confused by the abrupt change.

“Dates with Costia.”

Lexa puts her cup down carefully back on top of the saucer, the china clinking past the roaring in Clarke’s ears.

Lexa studies her, staring.

Clarke takes her in too.

_God, she’s beautiful._

Eyes, a soft intensity of forest-filtered light. Lips, inked in the same colour as pomegranate and by the same agreement as the word, ‘want’.

A stubborn curl of hair is out of place, as it always is, and Clarke has such longing to tuck it away.

Flustered, and because Clarke can’t read Lexa’s scrutinising expression, so she babbles, “You’ve mentioned her before but I didn’t know, she, uh, you guys ... were a thing. That you started seeing her.”

In the past several weeks, to fill the awkward silences that have increasingly punctuated their café outings, Lexa had started sharing jokes told by her new co-worker. Clarke hadn’t found them quite as funny in the retelling. She didn’t laugh quite as hard. She’s not laughing at all now.

More awkward minutes are eaten away by the stirring of Lexa’s tea until Lexa says, “It’s a recent development,” no longer looking at Clarke. Gaze averted intently to the ginger slices.

“I’d like to meet her.”

That regains Lexa’s attention, head jerking back up. There’s an unasked ‘why’ hanging from her lips and in the tilt of her head, like Clarke had just suggested the worst idea in the history of ideas. Clarke is questioning the wisdom herself but the wound is already gashing, how much worse can it get to rip off the bandaid.

“Y’know, best friend duty to vet and all.” Clarke tries to play off as casual interest.

Lexa stares at her again.

She looks so soft and so sad, it strikes something in Clarke.

This time, without thinking, Clarke reaches out to gently push the curl of hair behind her ear. Her fingers stay on Lexa’s cheek after the errand is done, hand cupping her face and thumb brushing back and forth. Their gazes lock. Lexa falls into the old habit as well, pressing lightly into Clarke’s palm.

It’s the closest—and most intimate—they have been in over a year.

Clarke aches to move her thumb a fraction of an inch to feel the bow of Lexa’s mouth she has so keenly missed.

Aches to feel her lips again, to catch it with her own.

To kiss her want and her sorrow and her apologies away until they are both breathless and it doesn’t hurt as much to look but not be able to touch.

Maybe it’s blind hope but Clarke sees a similar yearning reflected in Lexa’s eyes.

The suspended moment crystallises into resolve on Lexa’s face, the familiar preflight to major decisions she makes. Clarke holds her breath.

“Actually, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“What is it?” Clarke asks, her voice just above a whisper.

“Costia and I aren’t—”

Just as Lexa starts to answer, the bell of the café door rings and an unprepared second later, Finn stands between them at the table.

Clarke doesn’t notice his presence at first, too caught up in the green in front of her to hear him ask in greeting, “Hey, you ready to go?”

But then she hears a hitch of breath. Lexa breaks eye contact and Clarke sees the exact moment her ex-girlfriend closes up. Lexa turns her head away from her palm. Clarke drops her hand.

“Clarke?” Finn prompts again.

“You’re early,” Clarke replies, giving him a faint but genuine smile. “Just give me a moment?”

She doesn’t know what scene Finn walked in on but is grateful when he nods and turns to his right to politely acknowledge her company, “Hi Lexa,” before walking away to wait by an open stool at the server counter. His back is turned to them for privacy.

“What were you saying?” Clarke asks as soon as he leaves. Her hand feels cold all a sudden.

Before the question finishes, Clarke knows the answer seeing Lexa’s newly shuttered, glassy look. A different kind of reflection than before.

“Nothing.”

Lexa rises to her feet, hurrying to put on her coat.

”Nothing at all. It’s not important. I better get going too.”

Her voice sounds scratchy and tired.

Clarke is helpless to stop her from leaving things as unfinished, as confusing. Desperate, still sitting, she grabs Lexa by the wrist.

“Are you— are we okay?”

Unexpectedly, Lexa leans down and in. Kisses Clarke on her forehead, several significant inches north of her mouth. She can feel the quivering of a bottom lip held a forever beat against her skin. Its unsteady shake gives rise to Clarke’s own tremble. The distance between need and want has never been farther.

Has never been more painful.

“Everything is fine.”

On those three broken words, watching Lexa’s back recede further and further out of view, it’s the sort of inevitability Clarke has never wanted.

**—**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Initially meant as just a sketch, the (angsty) writer in me would have left it here, let readers draw their own conclusions about these pining ~~idiots~~ assholes. The (fluffy) fanfic reader in me said, _fuck that, I want a happy ending!_ So, if you're the latter too, and would like some exposition to go with your emotional deep dive off a cliff, then read on to the next and final instalment, which is over three times longer and many more words than the first two parts combined.


	3. part iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I've been working on patience_   
>  _Trying to trust in the timing of my tiny existence_   
>  _I come alive_   
>  _I sat still in the twilight_   
>  _I found peace in the quiet things_   
>  _How could I wish away all the in between_
> 
> — Kina Grannis (in the waiting)

**—**

“Lexa wait!”

She’s made it a block down from the café and doesn’t hear her name being called at first. Her heart pounding too much from the speed with which she had to get out of the coffee shop—after the speed with which it had plummeted when Finn showed up—to make any auditory sense of her surroundings.

The wind rushes in her ears. Fallen leaves crunch under her feet.

The shoulder seasons used to be her favourite. The quiet reset between summer and winter’s big shows is a pause she used to look forward to in the city, a collective breath held while the scenery changes, leaves find new hues, and time slows to prepare for nature’s deep rest or profound wake. She normally enjoys watching such transformation, the turning of things, witnessing the changeover from one existence into another.

A stasis pregnant with potential that invites reflection and drums up anticipation.

This in-between, though, liminal and meanwhile, Lexa hates it. She has been waiting and waiting an awful amount, but nothing changes.

Since their breakup, suspended as ever between the unknown and the uncertain, with no hint of what’s to come. No way forward. It has been the same every time she leaves Clarke and that wretched café, no better off than the week before. No less heartbroken. Some days, like today, more so.

Despite what she told Clarke, everything is not fine. So so far from it.

“Lexa, _please_ , wait,” she hears more clearly and recognises the voice of the speaker, strained as is, as Clarke closes in on the distance between them.

Lexa doesn’t plan on waiting, knowing that if she picks up her feet there is little chance for Clarke to catch up. She can pretend not to hear, intent to leave behind whatever moment they had earlier and forget about whatever ‘almost’ and ‘if only’ that transpired minutes ago.

But then, a laboured and panted, “Please,” soft in its desperation, pierces through the noise of the bustling street and causes her to stop in her tracks.

Lexa turns around.

Clarke crashes into her and they nearly stumble over.

Her quick reflexes prevent Clarke’s overshot run from making them both meet pavement.

Lexa absorbs the impact of the collision against her chest, and on instinct, one hand ends up around Clarke’s waist, the other in her hair, cradling the back of her head.

The world dampens to a quiet roar.

She holds still like that while Clarke regulates her breathing and Lexa tries not to breathe in the smell of Sunday mornings she had woken up today _aching_ to have again in her empty bed.

From Clarke’s tight grip on her shirt, she may not be the only one having an ambivalent reaction to the day and year’s unfolding. Conflicted and confused, the hug lasts longer than it should. Lexa reluctantly lets go when their embrace exceeds the normal bounds of friendship.

Once they are a safe foot apart, she draws upon months of practice to school her expression into something muted that hopefully doesn’t give her distressed state away. Lexa wonders what’s so urgent that can’t wait until the next time she voluntarily puts her heart in a vice, after she’s consumed copious amounts of alcohol to erase the memory of this time in order for there to be a next time.

Depressing and self-inflicted, but all the same, expected.

“Come with me.”

Not what she expected Clarke to say.

“What?”

Over Clarke’s shoulder in the distance, Lexa can make out Finn’s figure standing by the café’s front door, patiently waiting with Clarke’s coat over his arm.

“On your date?”

“What?” Clarke parrots, sounding as thrown as Lexa feels.

Not in the mood to parse the mixed signals, Lexa asks, pointed and tired, “What do you want, Clarke?”

“Come with me,” Clarke repeats, the plea intentionally or not overlooking her weariness. She reaches for Lexa’s hand, then squeezes her fingers. “Please.”

That same soft desperation cracks the glass wall of Lexa’s resolve. Betrayed by her own body, the spread of fire where their hands meet makes flips of her stomach. Against her better judgment, when it comes to Clarke, as always, Lexa is unable to resist.

An awkward and eerily silent car ride later—that Lexa spends questioning her life choices where she ends up in the backseat of a vehicle with her ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend—she finds herself standing out front of a brick building in a former industrial part of town. The area has been transforming the last few years into an art district and a new cultural hotspot. It is also popular with couples because of the many experimental eateries and craft breweries popping up.

They’ve parked Finn’s car within view of the nearby public square where a Sunday outdoor market is still going strong by the size of the crowd. String lights hang from the metal shed roof covering the trader stalls and tables. The smell of fresh baked bread and fresh cut flowers permeate the crisp Fall air. Notes of hot chocolate tickle her nose, along with cinnamon spice and apple cider. There’s a small pumpkin patch adjacent to the main thoroughfare where the sound of children’s excited chatter emanate from stacks of hay.

Autumn colours in the scene in shades of reds and oranges and green.

It’s postcard perfect, typical October.

It’s romantic.

Lexa feels a lump in her throat growing and revisits the wisdom of agreeing to tag along.

Finn is finagling with a small lock box by the entrance, several feet away from where she and Clarke look on. Clarke shifts on her feet, appearing nervous for some reason, eyes darting between Lexa and the building.

Lexa can’t help but notice how pretty she looks turtled in an oversize coat that neither of them acknowledges used to belong to Lexa. The cocoon styling gives the impression Clarke could be hiding a second person inside. Her nose is tipped red from the chill of the light breeze, her cheeks a rosy complexion. Her hair has taken on that golden light that summer lends to fall in the changeover of seasons, a borrowed yellow with a hint of copper. Her scarf is askew in that way it always is because Clarke has never mastered the twice-wrap, once-tuck technique Lexa has futilely tried to teach her. The combined image—and the desire to fix it—makes Lexa ache.

She turns away. Back to the market. But that visual is no better.

A year ago, they would have strolled hand in hand through the market; Clarke tucked in her side, Lexa’s arm eventually coming around her shoulder, sealing in warmth between them as they contemplate the goods on sale. Noticing a specialty cart of Masala Chai, she imagines stopping to watch the brewing process of the aromatic, milky black tea and Clarke teasing her over her indecision to go with the cardamom or the fennel and cloves flavour. “Why not both?” Clarke would say, then distract Lexa with a kiss and proceed to pay for their drinks while Lexa blushes at the open affection.

They would stay out past sunset, sharing the liquid warmth, full on laughter and drunk on each other.

It’s a late harvest scene that’s played out many times before, which has filled her with excessive fondness, and now, just sadness.

It tugs at the same string of longing that holds the moon aloft in a burnt orange, October sky.

“What are we doing here, Clarke?”

“Finn’s going to show us around.” Clarke tips her head to the large industrial door Finn has succeeded to open. He stands on the other side, holding it ajar for them. Looking pleased. “I thought you might want to see.”

Through the oversize windows and beyond the door, Lexa sees nothing but unpolished concrete columns, exposed mechanical systems hanging from the ceiling, and blank white walls. Unfurnished and undecorated, the absence of things is confusing until Lexa spots a milk crate in the centre. She can’t be sure from this distance but sitting on top of it looks to be some kind of bottle in a bucket with two flutes next to it.

When realisation dawns, Lexa whips her head back and glares at Clarke, incredulous. Third-wheeling Clarke’s anniversary is not the plot twist to her weekend she’d imagined.

It makes her angry.

“Around what exactly? You want me to go with you and your boyfriend in there so I can toast you?”

There’s no way Lexa will play witness to their celebration of whatever milestone. Despite the masochism of staying cordial with the person you haven’t gotten over while she dates, Lexa still has a sense of self-preservation.

Clarke looks taken aback by her refusal to participate and her sudden shift in tone. “Lexa—”

“No, Clarke.” Lexa interrupts, stern. She shakes her head, overwhelmed by rising emotions that have been suppressed for too long. “I know we’re best friends and I’m supposed to be supportive of your happiness but I can’t do this anymore. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I am happy for you, I am, or I’m trying to be.” Fighting back tears, she pauses to look up to the sky to recompose but then feels renewed anger seeing its too-blue, too familiar colour. After a year of pining, Lexa finally snaps. “This is not something I want to see. Nothing like what I wanted. How could you think I would ever want any of this? How could you do this to us?”

“That’s not fair,” Clarke rebuffs. Her face hardens at the accusation but not before Lexa catches the hurt plaintive in the slight tremble of her bottom lip, which steels into a thin line.

“What’s not fair? I’m not the one dating our realtor! Couldn’t you have picked someone else? If you didn’t want me, I thought you’d at least cared enough not to pick him.”

It seems especially cruel that Clarke would end up with the guy who showed them a glimpse of their future that’s no longer a possibility. The home that Lexa had dreamed of having with Clarke is now tainted by visions of Finn in her place. Worse yet, that Clarke seems indifferent to the swap, that she would presume Lexa would be a willing party to whatever is beyond those doors—their new loft or new happiness or new life.

Lexa makes a decision. Love’s lament, never laconic, always melancholic, keeps knocking at her door. This once, she doesn’t have the energy to answer.

“I can’t be your friend anymore. I can’t be in love with you and still be your friend. I’ve tried. I’ve already lost you, but if I walk through that door, I’m going to lose me too.”

In the midst of Lexa’s meltdown, she doesn’t realise the words that slip out until she notices Clarke’s eyes have widen and her face softens. Lexa is too exhausted to take them back or to parse her reaction properly. At the end of her tether, she’s ready to push past Clarke, call a cab and call it a day. To go home and sleep for a thousand years and hope that when she wakes up, the tightness in her chest will be as distant of a reality as this one where Clarke does not chose her.

Lexa takes a step back. But then, startlingly, Clarke takes a step forward, erasing her progress.

Another step back.

Another step forward.

Twice over again.

“Lexa,” Clarke says, a warning in her voice to stop moving. She moves in closer, reversing their dance, causing Lexa’s sharp intake of breath.

“What?” Lexa whispers, flustered by Clarke’s new proximity and the hand that has landed on her hip thwarting her next planned movement.

She spares a glance Finn’s way, who looks bored, if anything, attention squarely on his phone. Lexa doesn’t have the wherewithal to process his detachment or compute his conspicuous lack of emotional investment in what’s happening ten feet away, not when Clarke has started looking at her in a way that makes breathing extremely hard.

Clarke moves in closer still, her hands coming up with intent, pausing inches short mid air, seeking permission. When Lexa nods consent, Clarke advises with the care of approaching a wounded animal,

“I’m going to hug you now.”

As soon as Clarke’s arms come around her shoulders, which Clarke had to go on tiptoes to reach, Lexa falls into her embrace. When Lexa’s upset, historically, the only thing to calm her is a hug from Clarke. She rests her head in the crook of her neck. Draws comfort from the familiar scent.

Different from the clumsy hug on the street earlier, with Clarke’s hand cradling the back of her head this time, the contact is as intimate as the warmth she left on Lexa’s cheek back in the café. Lexa soaks it in and reconsiders whether she can ever actually walk away from this.

Clarke’s pulse thrums under her lips where they are pressed into her skin. It speeds up her own.

“Lexa?”

“Yeah?”

When Clarke doesn’t answer right away, Lexa pulls back. Her breath catches seeing the affection in Clarke’s eyes. The same yearning there.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Clarke gives notice. The little of air left in Lexa, completely leaves her lungs. “If that’s _not_ what you want, shake your head.”

Lexa has no words.

She stands motionless.

Stills completely.

Clarke must take that as answer because the next thing Lexa feels besides her heart beating out of its cage is fingers treading through her hair, then the press of Clarke’s mouth against hers. Too stunned at first to properly respond, Lexa lets Clarke part her lips and kiss warmth into her veins. Clarke’s soft answering moan springs her from inaction, she tilts her head to offer a better angle. Lexa reciprocates fully when their tongues meet. They both sink into the softness, Lexa’s arms wrapping around Clarke’s waist, pulling her closer into the give of their bodies.

The kiss deepens, reaching into the fissures of lost days and months. Stitching together the fault lines. Although Lexa is losing breath as seconds pass, it’s the first time her head has been above water in over a year. The ocean floor shrinks as her heart expands in size.

“ _That_ is what I want,” Clarke informs when they finally come up for air. Their foreheads are pressed together, her words lightly hitting Lexa’s mouth that remains agape in shock.

“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s not who I want.”

“Who?”

Specifics are fairly fuzzy at the moment when Lexa’s only thought is she wants to kiss Clarke again.

“I’m not with Finn.”

Lexa forgot he existed. The reminder startles her.

She sends a panicked look in Finn’s direction who has since moved away from the door and is standing leaned against the inside wall, waiting. He remains unaffected by the seismic shift of the news that’s just pulled the ground from her. She whispers, “Does he know that?”

Clarke laughs. “Yes, it’s common knowledge between us. I’ll explain later. But for now, will you please come?”

A chaste kiss follows the request which Lexa fights not to chase Clarke’s lips. She’s disoriented by what just happened but nods anyhow.

Clarke takes her hand and leads them inside.

The building is a former biscuit factory, Lexa learns. It’s been recently converted into a mix of residences on the upper floors and various studio spaces on the lower levels. Open and airy and light-filled, this double-height unit on the ground is part of a series of repurposed experimental workspaces for artists, makers and creatives.

Twenty minutes into the tour, she also learns that Clarke hasn’t let go of her hand, only realising it when Clarke does take her left hand back to sign papers that Finn had proffered from his satchel that Lexa hadn’t noticed he’d been carrying.

Having followed the pair around the premise blindly, unseeing and unhearing, Lexa misses the entirety of their exchange except for the words ‘congratulations’ and ‘enjoy’ before Finn is leaving and waving farewell to them.

“What do you think?”

Since Lexa is miles behind still processing the kiss outside, the details continue to elude her. “What’s going on?”

“Welcome to my new studio apartment,” Clarke says, wearing a proud smile. She gestures to the sparkling wine being chilled on ice. “A signing bonus from the building owner.”

Clarke struggles to pop the bottle open. Lexa wordlessly takes over the task, needing something to do with her hands. When the cork flies off, it finally dawns on her.

“Finn’s a realtor.”

His profession takes on new meaning.

The realisation confuses Clarke, brows furrowing at her epiphany. “I know.”

“Our former realtor.”

“I know.”

“Who sells real estate.”

Clarke laughs. “Yes, that would be in his job description.”

There’s a crinkle of patient amusement in her eyes as Lexa acts in her official captain’s capacity to steer the Obvious ship to shore.

Lexa pours them each a drink into the flutes, handing one glass to Clarke.

“Who showed us our dream house.”

This “I know” she receives is sadder than the last two. With new light shed on old information, mind whirling, Lexa doesn’t heed the brief shadow casting over Clarke’s face.

“C’mon,” she is urged into moving again before further thoughts can settle.

Taking her glass and the bottle, Clarke guides them back up to the mezzanine level, which Lexa hadn’t really paid attention to before during the tour but now sees it to be a cozy platform space that overlooks half the studio below.

“This is my favourite spot,” Clarke shares, voice soft and dreamy. “A tiny corner of the world to myself.”

Lexa can see it. The light pours in through the double storey windows past the gaps in leaves of the large maple out front, dappling the floor in streaks of pale pinks and oranges from the setting sun. Tucked away and more intimate than the open work area on the ground level, albeit empty now save for a leftover bookshelf, it’s easy to imagine a well-used sofa, a flannel blanket, and Clarke’s artwork on the walls giving it a worn, lived-in homeyness.

In the corner is a free standing wood stove fireplace, a black contemporary streamline design. Along with a wide plank cedar floor, the mobile log rack next to it adds the woodsy appeal of a cabin aesthetic, offsetting the light industrial hard surfaces of concrete and brick of the studio below.

“The last tenant was this Norwegian cabinetmaker who brought it over,” Clarke fills in and leaves her side for a moment to turn it on, “and who also made that bookcase.”

Lexa watches her play with the settings to start a fire, muttering instructions to herself that Finn must have imparted on his way out. In short time, a comforting warmth envelops the space. Varying intensities of orange flicker from behind the glass door.

“Not sure why he left them behind,” Clarke continues, turning her attention back to Lexa and looking content with her work, “but it’s what sealed the deal for me.”

Lexa swallows, the lump in her throat resurfacing. In past daydreaming about their ideal home, they’ve talked about having a fireplace (for Clarke) and a small library (for Lexa) as the ultimate dealbreaker. She imagines them in front of the warm glow of an open fire and Clarke curled up sketching while Lexa ambles through a novel with her head on her lap, an unhurried silence passing between them, interrupted only by the occasional passage Lexa shares out loud and Clarke’s responding hums.

She imagines brisk Fall evenings wrapped in thick knit sweaters and wrapped in each other. Making love to the point of quiet exhaustion, bodies naked and moving as one while a fire softly crackles.

The scene is so tangible, a cutaway to previous nights of domestic bliss, she can almost taste it.

She feels sudden nostalgia for a future that hasn’t happened, remembrance of things that live in the greyness of _not yet_ and at the edges of _someday_. There are words for this elusive feeling of loss and grief, saudade in Portuguese, sehnsucht in German, desiderium in English.

A longing for the unfinished and the imperfect, a yearning for an ideal alternative. An affective, afflictive _want_.

It takes some minutes to refocus.

“It’s amazing. Congratulations, Clarke,” Lexa offers softly, belated. She clinks her glass against Clarke’s, remembering the drink in hand. They both take long, contemplative sips, then settle on the floor, sitting with their backs against the wall. The fire grows steady to a low toasty heat. Lexa pulls her knees up and soaks it in, lets the glass stem dangle between her fingers where her hands hang between her legs. “It’s really great.”

“Yeah?” A breath releases from Clarke when Lexa nods, as if it had been held pending her approval. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t know you’ve been thinking about doing something like this,” Lexa comments surveying the live-work space, taking everything in anew, ruefully reminded of how far apart their lives have gotten. Of how divergent their paths have become when they were once entangled like the roots of a mangrove tree reaching up above ground in the same direction for air and sunlight.

“I needed a change,” Clarke supplies, a thoughtful expression crossing her face. “Finally plucked up the courage to venture out. But I couldn’t afford a studio space and still pay rent on my apartment. Finn’s been helping me look for a place like this where I can have both under one roof. A massive search effort on my minuscule budget.” She then turns to Lexa, holds her gaze, and qualifies, “It’s been strictly professional.”

Playing catch-up, Lexa can’t quite yet square what Clarke is revealing about the nature of her relationship with Finn with what she had heard and seen, the kiss outside notwithstanding. While the past hour has started to alter the view of recent events from her perspective, hope is a fickle thing and Lexa’s heart too fragile to give it room to grow.

“But game night two months ago, Raven mentioned your first date.”

Clarke chuckles, self-deprecating.

“Unfortunate misunderstanding. Finn had assumed when I contacted him out of the blue interested in finding something new—in moving on—that I was asking him out. When I told him to meet me at a friend’s gallery for their exhibit opening, wanting to show him the kind of light and workspace I’m looking for, he thought it was a date. I should’ve realised sooner it could’ve been better phrased. Had to clear the mix up immediately when he arrived with flowers.”

Clarke hangs here head in light-hearted, exaggerated embarrassment at the unforced error.

“That must have been disappointing for him,” Lexa surmises, offering a sympathetic grimace while trying to suppress a secret smile at his misfortune and the news of their non-date status.

“He took it on the chin and I did feel awful. But, that’s why Raven was teasing, because my straightdar is shot after gaying up for so long.” Clarke airquotes the latter half of the sentence, no doubt mimicking their friend. She lets a beat pass before she continues, “Apparently, straight or gay though, I can’t tell when someone’s into me,” and gives Lexa a meaningful glance.

“I’m just as clueless.” Lexa commiserates, mind replaying their kiss on loop.

“Anyway, he’s a really nice guy—great hair, which seems to be my thing—but there’s nothing there for me. My interest is elsewhere.”

Lexa allows herself this smile for the meaning that accompanies Clarke’s words, feeling the squeeze of her hand.

But to cover her bases, just in case, she prompts,

“So when you cancelled on girls night last week and I saw him heading toward your place the next morning?”

“He had found this property through a private lead and wanted to move fast because he’d heard the listing was going to be taken down soon,” Clarke explains. “He managed to book a last-minute viewing that night. It’s big for one person and slightly out of my price range but it’s a lease to own scheme and I fell in love with it right away so we put in an offer. I had planned to drop by your place after but the paperwork took way longer than expected. Then the next day the building owner wanted to interview me because it did turn out she had already narrowed it down to two other applicants, a sculptor and a printer maker, but was curious about my proposal for how I’d use the space. Finn picked me up first thing. We got the call today that I got it.”

“I see.” Lexa nods. She drinks the rest of her glass in one gulp and refills to the top. Feeling like there’s not enough alcohol to close the canyon gap between perception and truth she had leaped over to land on a false conclusion. “She made the right choice.”

Clarke hums agreement.

“Wait, how _did_ you know Finn had came by?” She asks, eyes narrowing, teasing.

“I was in the neighbourhood.” Lexa dithers and averts her knowing gaze. She deflects, “So, to draw a fine point on it, you two are not dating?”

“No, we are not,” Clarke answers. Lexa’s stomach swoops at the soft smile partnered with her reply. It somersaults when her eyes flicker down to Lexa’s lips. “I wouldn’t have kissed you if we were.”

“And you’ve never dated him?”

“Never.”

“Anyone since ...” Lexa’s question trails off. The ‘me’ implicit.

Clarke shakes her head. After a brief pause to let it sink in, she continues, “Although, to be honest, a part of me did feel guilty for cheating on you.” At Lexa’s widened eyes, she quickly elaborates, signalling to the fireplace, “It’s something you’ve endlessly talked about, and I secretly hoped it’d make you extremely jealous.”

“I am incredibly envious,” Lexa acknowledges, not shy about her obsession with wood. She dramatically clutches at her heart, “You wound me, Clarke.”

It earns her a light laugh but then, Clarke looks nervous as though feeling similar, although real, pangs, and asks, “What about you? Dating ...”

Lexa is quick to shake her head too. “I wouldn’t have kissed you back.”

“So, Costia ...”

“Was a real date, a first,” Lexa admits, finishing the sentence, but adds, confiding, “but not something that interested me either.” Relief seems to wash over Clarke, who tries to hide her smile by finding sudden interest in the bubbles of her glass. Lexa knocks her shoulder and nudges her feet. Feeling brave, emboldened by the memory of Clarke’s lips, she shares, “I’m still kind of hung up on this girl, my best friend actually, who I couldn’t stop talking about the whole time. Probably really poor dating etiquette to earn a second date anyway.”

“Who wouldn’t want a second chance with you?” Clarke’s rhetorical response prickles the air between them with possibility. Lexa sees her throat bob with the same effort it takes her to swallow. “So, to draw a fine point on it,” Clarke copies verbatim, “you two are not dating?”

“She’s a friend.” Lexa confirms. She looks away from Clarke’s eyes, feeling suddenly self-conscious and vulnerable. “I seem to do well in that category.” Despite everything that’s transpired this late afternoon, doubt lingers. “Why did you break up with me?”

Clarke sighs. Her gaze crinkles with unspent sorrow.

“We need to talk, Lex.”

**—**

“Wait here?”

Curiously, Clarke’s request comes just as Lexa agrees to talking. Clarke holds her gaze. A soft look. Waiting.

As if Lexa would go anywhere right now, she nonetheless nods, reassuring of her intent to stay put.

Stranger still, it’s Clarke who leaves and exits the loft. Lexa watches her through the window bundling toward the market. She watches until Clarke’s form recedes into the mass of the market activities. The fairy lights have been turned on to make it appear like a ceiling of stars have descended to provide luminous, protective cover over the din of revellers and shoppers.

It’s sort of magical in a way Lexa hadn’t expected her evening to turn out.

The nervous energy that’s been thrumming in the background ever since she got out of the car, pushes its way to the foreground, mutated into a different kind of tenterhooks—anticipation rising for the new territory they are navigating post breakup and with the new knowledge of their mutual singlehood.

What it all means, however, is set aside momentarily when Clarke returns with two hot drinks and one large slice of pumpkin pie with two plastic forks.

“You didn’t get a chance to finish earlier,” Clarke says by way of explanation, referencing Lexa’s quick leave of the café and her abandoned dessert.

The short excursion outside has left a cold mark on her nose, colouring its tip red again that Lexa wants badly to kiss.

Because they’ve crossed over into this amorphous space of _maybe_ , and _possibly_ , and _intimate touches between ex-girlfriends_ , so she does. Restraint has always been a lost cause in Clarke’s presence. Lexa leans in and gently grazes the tips of their noses. Steals an ‘accidental’ brush of her lips on the draw back.

Her surprising move only serves to push the redness of Clarke’s nose to her cheeks, watching it fan out to a lovely blush colour.

God, she wants to kiss that too.

Grateful for a distraction as well as the thoughtfulness, Lexa takes the offerings instead. She doesn’t stifle the lopsided grin that forms when hints of masala and cardamom waft up. The drink of tea and the first taste of pumpkin decadence soothe, a balm for the cooler weather.

So, over cinnamon crumbs and chai, they talk. Between bites, Clarke explains to her what led to their breakup, where her head and heart had been and Lexa’s participation—or lack thereof—in that outcome. It’s a long overdue conversation. Lexa listens. While it’s not about assigning blame nor treading back and forth over where and with whom the fault lies, she feels her throat closing at her complicity in making Clarke feel unwanted.

Her actions, although taken in the interest of a bigger picture of their future together, had personally affected Clarke in the present in ways she never intended. What initially was a sacrifice turned out to be an absence of a magnitude that caused irreparable damage unequal to the happiness the end goal promised. Lexa had failed to see how much and how long Clarke had been waiting for her each day she toiled away at work. Failed to recognise how collapsing into bed nightly and holding Clarke tightly against her chest—a salvation after long hours—was not compensation enough for her daily inattentiveness, nor communication enough about her long term investment in their relationship.

To think that Clarke felt physically and emotionally abandoned, leading her to question Lexa’s commitment, when the opposite could not be more true, hurts Lexa. And to think that Lexa misinterpreted Clarke’s choice to leave and accepted the decision without fighting to better understand why, devastates her.

“I’m sorry I hurt you. I never meant for things to turn into this.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

“Letting you go—walking away from you—was the last thing I saw for us. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

“Why did you? If you didn’t want to break up either, then why did you agree?” Clarke asks, sounding forlorn.

“Remember how you gave up that overseas residency to stay here with me after grad school?”

It was a tough decision back then for them. After having newly confessed their feelings to and for one another, and after Lexa had already accepted a postgrad clerking position, Clarke was offered a prestigious post in Denmark on a visiting professor’s surprised, late recommendation. It would have entailed a long distance relationship when they had barely come down from the high of first kisses and first times together. The timing hadn’t been stellar even if the opportunity to develop her practice in an international setting was. But, as Clarke had explained in declining the offer, she had waited four years to kiss Lexa—waiting any longer than another day to kiss her again didn’t seem a viable option. So, Clarke stayed. There would be other art opportunities, she reasoned, but not other Lexas.

Clarke nods, acknowledging the circumstance of their getting together. Sometime between sipping their drinks and finishing the pie, they’ve retaken to holding hands again. Clarke stops her unconscious play of their fingers to squeeze Lexa’s hand to urge her on.

“The Monty’s leading up to it you started talking about travel and these amazing places abroad you wanted to visit. You seemed keen to be elsewhere but here. And I couldn’t afford that brownstone Finn showed us and that you were so excited about. I felt like, on one hand, maybe I’ve been holding you back, and also on the other, couldn’t give you what you wanted, not a fraction of your dreams.” Lexa tells her. The guilt of being the choice Clarke made at the fork in the road resurfaces. “So when you broke up with me, and asked to be friends again, I thought you had changed your mind about settling with me and maybe regretted missing your opportunity for a different life.”

“Lexa,” Clarke interrupts. “That wasn’t it at all.”

”I get that now, but at the time, when I had assumed we were on the same page headed in the same direction and then you suddenly veered us in another, it jarred me into realising that perhaps we were reading from entirely different books, not just chapters. I know you’ve said before you were happy to have stumbled on teaching art instead of hanging out with snotty Europeans but I wondered if I was anchoring you from pursuing bigger things, that in the back of your mind you came to conclude you were wasting your MFA on kids with boogers.”

 _Wasting your time with me_ , Lexa doesn’t say.

“Hey, don’t knock Aden’s potential,” Clarke jokes. “I mean, sure, I have to lower my expectations about distilling abstract colour theory to six year olds but I _am_ happy I get to be the one who helps them figure out what lines they’d like to colour inside or outside of. It’s fulfilling in a different way.”

Lexa nods. Art educators are unsung heroes. Still, she thinks, “You could have had something else, somewhere else. _Someone else_.”

Clarke peers at her, brow furrowed disbelieving of such probability.

“Lexa, I’ve not once regretted my decision. The choice I made,” Clarke says firmly. Then, softer, “I could never regret you.”

A quiet moment later, she looks contemplative, a finger drawing circles along the paper rim of her drink. “Speaking of miscues and missed potential, I thought maybe part of why you were pulling away from me was because _I_ didn’t live up to it. That I’m not in your league. You were so busy with work and important meetings and being a big shot lawyer, you didn’t have time for a grade school art teacher.”

“Clarke, no.” Lexa is swift to correct the error and stamp out the insecurity. She tips Clarke’s chin up and locks their gazes. “I’m proud of you. What you do is important. I get paper cuts all day while you open young eyes to different ways of seeing the world.” With the deep blue studying her, Lexa can’t fathom anyone better to do so. “If anyone should have an inferiority complex, it’d be me.”

Clarke laughs and rolls her eyes, looking unconvinced of Lexa’s hyperbolic under-assessment of her value.

“Alright, fine. We’re equally amazing,” Lexa accepts with exaggerated hubris, “and we’ll change the world and bring about global peace.”

“Maybe not the whole world, but this neighbourhood at least. That’s what this space will hopefully be,” Clarke supplements. “While I do think the kids have been my excuse for too long not to put myself out there, I’ll continue to run workshops from here for the local community alongside developing my own thing.”

Lexa smiles then suggests, a fond memory crossing her mind, “Hey, maybe you can give me private life drawing lessons.”

“Don’t you already have a mastery of the female body?”

“Only from the knees down.”

Clarke laughs.

“God, I fell for you hard during that intro class,” Clarke reminisces about her short foray into modelling, a memorable first encounter for Lexa with live nudes. “You refused to look any higher at me than my calves.”

Lexa’s older sister had signed her up in her senior year for the extracurricular out of concern that the only thing she would remember of her college experience would be the Constitution. Lexa has no creative talent to speak of, but that semester, she got really good at drawing feet.

“I was being respectful!”

“Not that respectful,” Clarke teases, poking holes at her defense. She also makes a lewd stroking motion with her thumb over the back of Lexa’s hand that has Lexa going beet red at the unsubtle reference to her past confession of finally (accidentally) sneaking a peek at the end of the semester and then going straight home to masturbate.

During the session on drawing fabric with fine liners, Clarke had reflexively bent down to pick up another student’s dropped pen, an innocent movement that had displaced her strategically placed cloth and spilt her breasts out in Lexa’s full view. In trying desperately to look away, Lexa’s gaze landed worse on a blonde patch of hair. Her fluster to act normal after, eyes adamantly respectful on her sketch pad for the rest of the hour, resulted in giving Clarke a sixth toe and an extra ankle that day. Clarke has relentlessly made fun of her since.

“Clarke,” Lexa groans, hiding her face in the curve of Clarke’s shoulder in deep embarrassment. The groan turns into a pout feeling a patronising _there, there_ pat of her head. “It was one time. Besides, you and nothing but a white sheet isn’t a visual any sex-starved college student would survive.”

“Shouldn’t life drawing be about more than surviving?” Clarke laughs again, unaffected by Lexa’s glare. “Anyway, I got something out of it too. Getting to stare at your concentration face once a week for two months while you avoided eye contact with me is the easiest, most enjoyable, $200 I’ve ever made.”

Giving Lexa an out, Clarke kindly changes the subject. But the new focus on finances is a landmine of another kind when she circles back to a throwaway line from Lexa earlier.

“Hey, you know, I wouldn’t have expected you to buy that house on your own. I may make pennies by comparison but I’ve got bags full of them to contribute to the down payment.”

Lexa stiffens at the mention of their respective financial situation. She considers her options. The conversation is heading in a direction with potential consequences should she disclose the true motives that precipitated their fallout, why Lexa spent more time at the firm than at home.

“The upshot of our breakup is that I had money for this place,” Clarke continues unaware of Lexa’s deliberation. Switching out the chai paper cup, she raises her empty wine glass to toast, without irony, “Glass half full, right?”

Seeing the bareness of the glass and of Clarke’s fingers wrapped around the stem, Lexa thinks of the half life she has spent these months losing sleep over what could have been—in the waiting for what may never come. The war inside over battles not fought, imaginary futures not fated.

They share a sad smile. Downing the dregs of her own drink, Lexa tastes the bittersweetness of _almost, but not quite_. It also leaves on her tongue a sediment of truth that Lexa owes to Clarke.

“I wasn’t worried about your ability to chip in,” Lexa says, finally piping up.

Clarke scoffs, another playful roll of her eyes. She misses the change in Lexa’s demeanour busying herself with pouring wine into the remains of her tea.

“What do you mean? Lex, your lawyering hourly rate is something ungodly that no teacher should ever have to lay eyes on.”

She makes a face at the offensive salary.

Lexa takes a deep breath and untangles their hands.

“I was saving my pennies for something else.”

She reaches into her pocket to pull out something with a fair bit more shine than the copper of coins.

“I couldn’t afford both a down payment _and_ this.”

Clarke looks up at her emphasis, and freezes.

Lexa’s reflexes are called into action for the second time today. She manages to catch the bottle dropping out of Clarke’s grip just before it hits the floor.

Clarke gapes at the ring in her hand, shell-shocked.

Lexa’s heart beats wildly.

She gulps.

“This was why you’d been burning yourself at both ends of the candle,” Clarke correctly guesses a silent beat later, the question phrased more like a statement said aloud to herself and not addressed to Lexa.

“I took on as many cases as the firm would let me,” Lexa answers anyway. “It’s why I worked so much; to rack up those ungodly billing hours. That night you dropped by with the sandwiches, I had finally reached my goal and the team was cheering me on after I showed them printouts from the jeweller who had sent photos of the design progress moments before you walked in. We went to celebrate at the pub after.”

Clarke simply stares, looking between Lexa and the ring.

Her silence makes Lexa nervous.

“It’s a custom cut,” she continues, and watches light skate across the surface as the ring is turned this way and that, “costs a few more pennies.”

“You’ve just been carrying that around?”

Lexa shrugs, trying for levity. “It was non refundable. My pocket or the trash.”

Just as her right shoulder resets in place, Clarke shoves at it. Evident from the force of the contact she does not find the least bit of humour in Lexa’s joke. Instead, Clarke is on her feet the next second and looks forthright angry.

“Why do you still have it?” Clarke asks, changing tact and tone, teeth gritted in firm caution for Lexa to think twice about skirting around the question again.

Lexa sighs.

Timely, the crackle and pop of still burning flames and the glowing embers several feet away, remind her.

She thinks of mid autumn festivals and pumpkin carvings, borrowed sweaters and shared blankets; of fireside chats and burnt marshmallows and burrowing in under Fall’s kaleidoscope of colours; of waking up to arms numb from holding, a familiar pressure on her chest and vision filled with sunlight filtered through yellow strands of hair. She thinks of the kiss outside and a forever type of warmth inside. By her side.

Standing too, one helpless shoulder rises and falls again.

“You know why.”

“ _Why_?”

Crossed arms and a defiant chin let her know Clarke isn’t giving in until she gets a satisfactory answer.

Resigned, Lexa searches blindly for words to justify the small, constant weight she carries, and lands on,

“Because I was hoping, some way, somehow— _someday_ —you’d still be in love with me too.”

Clarke blinks.

Whatever reaction Lexa expected about her foiled engagement intention, spelling her heart out again in no uncertain terms causes the opposite.

Far from echoing the sentiment, Clarke is rendered speechless.

Her brows knit together.

Furious.

In combination with the swift downturn of her lips, Lexa knows she’s in trouble.

The air tenses.

The yelling starts.

“You are such an idiot! You’ve been hanging onto a diamond ring and didn’t think to mention it when I asked to be friends again?? Why were you hoping all this time when you could have just _asked_ me?” Mincing no words, Clarke assails, “What the fuck, Lexa. I, we, lost a year—an entire year!—because you never told me this was a possibility and instead let me cry my eyes out every night for the past eighteen months?!”

Lexa winces at her volume. She debates an appropriate comeback.

“I didn’t know you’ve been crying. _You’re_ the one who broke up with _me_ , remember? I didn’t think you’d want it.”

“Ugh!”

Although they have just gone over the misunderstandings and reasons behind each other’s misguided perspectives, Clarke rounds on her anyway, pushes at Lexa’s chest while tears of frustration threaten to well over.

Lexa backs up, sheepishly offers, “Telling you I had sunken my savings into buying a ring, and that I had overworked myself into the ground to get it right, would have just made you feel bad after the fact.”

The explanation does little to smooth out the line etched near permanently between Clarke’s brows now. Clarke pushes at Lexa some more, each shove taking them across the room until Lexa’s back hits the wall on the other side.

Standing with her face an inch away, Lexa’s hands on her hips, unconsciously placed, are all that stops Clarke from coming closer. Fists tightly curled by her side, Lexa can hear if not see the steam bellowing from her ears.

Lexa braces for further reckoning. But something of her scared look—a fear that a second chance with Clarke is fading fast—must save her.

Clarke’s shoulders drop.

Her face softens.

Her hands loosen.

The white-hot flare of her temper that propelled them across the loft space snuffles down to a weighted whisper.

“You should have told me. All of it. You can’t always be stoic and bear it so I don’t have to. Regardless of what I was saying and whether it was truthful, if you felt differently, you should have told me. Your feelings matter too. What you want matters too.”

With a hummingbird heartbeat, Lexa has no reply to Clarke’s soft reproach and no other reasonable course of action but to kiss her.

Fully and unrestrained.

It’s hungry and aching and incredibly unapologetic.

She is never going to apologise for putting Clarke’s needs first.

Clarke ekes a noise of surprise at Lexa’s heated, inarticulate response but instantly follows her lead, opening up for Lexa’s entrance into her mouth. The slide of their tongues pulls twin moans. Lexa’s grip on her waist tightens.

With roles reversed, this kiss led by Lexa expands upon Clarke’s prior attempt of their last kiss to qualify the something unnamed continuing to tether them to each other. To quantify the shape of desire, wider in breadth, larger in scope, something of a magnitude exponentially greater than the smallness of space allowed between their mouths.

Entreating hands prod for anything to hold onto when Lexa pushes at the small of Clarke’s back to erase any distance left.

Clarke folds into her chest. A faint tremor wracks through her body as Lexa sucks on her tongue, that Lexa feels emphatically travel the length of her own body down to the tip of her toes.

They are a shuddering, delicate mess of push and pull, give and take. A tremulous balance of hope and longing.

Clarke’s love is tactile. Their relationship always grounded in touch. To go so long without has been a palpable loss. To feel it again, in this velvet hunger kind of way, is beyond anything Lexa has dreamed of. It repairs a little what she thought would remain broken. The absence that has rented them in half is filled up once more, pieces falling back into place, put back close enough to complete if not yet whole.

An agile affection that bends and shrinks and expands to fit with the curve of their mouths.

When they have to change angles for needed air, Lexa draws back to check in and wonders if her own eyes are as dark as Clarke’s have become. She’s given no time to consider the pretty rush of colour to Clarke’s cheeks, nor the inviting redness of her mouth, Clarke’s hand glides up her neck to her jawline then cups her face and closes the gap again.

All teeth and tongue, it’s a mad dash to steal the breath from each other.

Their shaky exhales and wandering hands, greedy for bare skin, are a callback to when the dam had finally broke the first time five years ago, when the sexual tension between them, excruciatingly taut by that point, needed an outlet that too intimate hugs could no more contain.

The difference though, over the past twelve months, there have been no sleepovers or morning cuddles. No built up intimacy. No close calls and accidental touches between friends. Yet, somehow, despite the physical distance, the result is the same half a decade later.

Clouded in lust, their mutual desire has Lexa gasping within an inch of her life. She is so turned on, overwhelmed with arousal—months of built up want. By the dampening feel of her jeans of the thigh that’s between Clarke’s legs, Lexa is not alone.

Their fervent kissing turns urgent fast when Clarke drags her lips up the column of Lexa’s neck. Before long Lexa is turning them around and pining Clarke against the wall, lips never parting.

As their mouths move together, Lexa feels desperation she’s never felt before. To be with Clarke, to be inside of Clarke. Her ex girlfriend must feel it too, rubbing herself against Lexa, pawing at her clothes. If that wasn’t signal enough, Clarke’s whine of her name, “Lexa,” a slow burn of vowels finding their way out, spurs them on. In a frenzied moment of uncoordinated coordination, together they remove Clarke’s pants and then Lexa is on her knees in between her legs.

She sucks black and blue into Clarke’s inner thighs, tracing a path towards the heat of her centre. Clarke’s legs spread, widening access, Lexa noses against the wetness she finds. Inhales the scent. And then, licks into her. Thick desire greets the flat of her tongue and pools at its tip.

Looking up, she tells Clarke, resolute, “This is what I want.”

Eyes half-lidded, Clarke’s gaze momentarily clears to cradle Lexa’s face. Her hand brushes away Lexa’s hair, fingers strumming an achingly familiar chord along the curve of her jaw, the touch so breathtakingly tender—love in C minor key.

Clarke’s consent comes in the form of pushing Lexa’s head insistently back in. After several deliberately slow strokes that cause Clarke to dig her heel into Lexa’s back with the leg that’s since draped over her shoulder, Lexa opens her up with her tongue and enters in an alternative pattern of shallow and deep penetration, slow and swift withdrawal.

Clarke is crying her pleasure in delayed response to Lexa’s rapid and unpredictable movements. It’s a rush of reckless abandon for the next while, both panting heavily, both clawing, until Clarke orgasms, spilling wet warmth into Lexa’s mouth.

Lexa rises to her feet and lets Clarke taste herself, kissing her deeply, while she replaces the emptiness below with two eager fingers and continues relentless. As Lexa buries herself inside Clarke over and again, at some point, it’s no longer kissing so much as hot and heavy breathing in each other’s mouths, a warmth as humid as the stickiness coating Lexa’s fingers.

A broken whimper—the sweetest sound—cracks open her chest. The need to make Clarke come again throbs as wanton as the clit vibrating under her thumb’s intermittent, insistent pressure. Clarke moans and gasps as Lexa thrusts and kisses with increasing intent, stretching her inside until three fingers easily fit.

“Fuck,” Clarke cries, encouraging Lexa on to repeat the curling motion that motivates more short, breathy noises.

Her concentration falters when Clarke removes her top to reveal full breasts straining to stay contained in her bra.

Lexa stutters to a stop.

Clarke is breathtakingly pretty, a gorgeous bloom of pink races across her chest in reaction to Lexa’s newly captive attention. Lexa’s mouth immediately covers over one nipple, sucking hard. Her free hand takes to the other breast, grabbing greedily. Squeezing and pushing just as hard.

With renewed urgency, prompting Clarke to wrap legs around her, Lexa lifts her off from the wall and stumbles their way to the nearest horizontal surface for better leverage. Given the distinct lack of furniture, they end up on the floor.

Landing with an inelegant thud, Lexa has enough awareness to cup the back of Clarke’s head to absorb the impact but kisses an apology nonetheless for any accidental damage.

“You okay?” Lexa worries, eyes searching for invisible injury.

“Very.” Clarke reassures. Looking down at Lexa’s hand still palming her breast, she remarks, “I forget how enthusiastic you are about them.”

They laugh together, Lexa hiding her embarrassment into the crook of Clarke’s neck. Laughter gives way to lust when Clarke arches up, indicating her readiness to keep going.

Lexa fumbles to remove her own clothes and then slips her fingers back inside Clarke. She is met with a delirious heat and the fluttering walls of her sex, Clarke writhing under her touch.

The wooden floorboard does a heroic job of keeping up with their mutual drive. The sounds of their naked desire echoes in the studio. Dripped in want, like a brush that’s just taken to a fresh coat, Lexa paints her longing across Clarke’s body. Bristles of cratering, carnal need sweep across her skin.

Chest to chest, breath to breath, their bodies sync in motion.

For awhile, all Lexa hears and feels and _smells_ is Clarke. Her scent is intoxicating as ever, a headiness beyond compare of the chai or champagne they’ve consumed. While the residual dust of cinnamon adds a new fragrant twist that has her return again and again to Clarke’s lips, dipping in for a taste, she drowns in her natural sweet musk which gains in strength the harder her fingers work pumping between Clarke’s legs.

“God, I’ve missed you,” Lexa confesses into the shell of her ear, “so much.”

Clarke threads the fingers of Lexa’s free hand, squeezing in empathy, ushering in a moment of soft, aimless kissing. Lexa revels in the intimacy, in every buck of her hips and every stretch of a moan as she rocks into her.

Her thrusts slow into a gentler persuasion.

Stroke and sigh, curl and cant, kiss and keen, the minuteness and responsiveness of each action and reaction evidence their bodies’ immutable knowledge of one another that a year apart has not diminished in the least.

Bound so tightly as one, they are no longer moving as much as swaying together.

“Close again,” Clarke tells her, breath hot in Lexa’s ear, neediness creeping back into her voice already roughened by pleasure. Clarke’s nails dig into her skin to emphasise the orgasm within reach.

The swelling under her fingers corroborates the approaching release.

“I know, baby, I know,” Lexa soothes.

In contrast to her gentle voice, all softness falls wayside to a raw fucking. Lexa takes Clarke in deep, possessive passes, fingers hammering.

Clarke does her best to move with her. Lexa’s hips pick up pace, a maddening contempt for gravity. The floor groans under the weight of their shared purpose.

“Lexa,” Clarke gasps, pawing helpless at the peak of her climb.

Rubbing her clit in tighter circles, Lexa thickly commands,

“Come.”

The gravely tone of her voice takes her over the edge. Clarke comes hard against her hand and loudly into her mouth as Lexa kisses her thoroughly through the descent.

She shakes in Lexa’s arms and Lexa shudders in turn. The sympathy orgasm tempers the heat between her legs. Makes it a little more bearable.

“I miss you too.” Clarke manages to expel after, a belated reply as an arm shields over her eyes while she catches her breath. “But I’m still so mad at you.”

There’s no bite to her words. Lexa kisses across her jaw then down to her neck, peppering apologies along the way.

“I know.”

“I’m also so mad at me.”

“I know.”

“We could have been doing this all this time.”

“I know.”

“We are so very fucking stupid.”

“We are what we are.”

Lexa concedes but her concentration has shifted to grinding against Clarke’s thigh. Calling it dry humping would be a misnomer given the state of her wetness.

Clarke answers her nonverbal but undeniable need with hands rounding on Lexa’s ass and pushing down to help with the chase of friction. Minutes of mindless rutting are followed by a filthy kiss, demanding and dismantling, that is as explicit as it is exquisite.

“Fuck,” Lexa pants.

She is distracted in her task of absorbing Clarke’s ardour to the point of not realising Clarke has flipped her on her back and descended down her body, until Clarke’s tongue presses hotly into her. Pleasure singes at the contact. Within minutes, after some toe-curling sucking and decisive curling of tongue, Lexa is coming again too, falling headlong.

Just as fast as her unexpected second orgasm had arrived, Clarke takes control of their pleasure again. Apparently not ready for this to be over yet.

She rearranges herself to straddle over Lexa’s hips, takes her hand to position it in the the middle of her abdomen, then lowers down on three fingers. When Clarke bottoms out in one swift movement, Lexa doesn’t know whose sharp intake of air belongs to whom. She watches enraptured as Clarke starts to ride her.

Clarke’s hands take purchase of Lexa’s abs. Head thrown back and breasts pushed together by her arms outstretched position, she’s the exact image of the girl Lexa couldn’t keep her eyes off during that drawing class. Who she fell hard and fast for and has pined endlessly after.

A dream girl who taught her about the nuances of love and lust and the shortest of breath that can exist between the fealty of friendship and a devouring desire.

In blonde curls and dusty pink nipples, in a beauty mark above kiss-bruised lips, in strikingly blue eyes that are looking down at her with so much want, Lexa sees what she will never give up on again.

When Clarke comes for a final time, it is with Lexa’s name falling from her mouth.

The softest but surest utterance yet.

“Why would you think I wouldn’t want this?” Clarke asks afterward.

Lexa is distracted by how pretty she looks, lightly out of breath, to register the rethreading of their conversation. Clarke presses her hand to Lexa’s heart. The familiar weight gains her full attention.

“I’ve only ever wanted you. You’re all I want.”

“Good to know,” Lexa whispers. Happiness flutters in her stomach, the butterflies welcomingly disruptive. “Useful information.”

Clarke laughs at her deadpan, but complains, “I’m trying to be romantic here.”

Lexa’s smile grows wider, the butterflies more active. Uncontained giddiness for the possibility of what next. On cloud nine at the difference half a day and a change in perspective can make. Still, she teases and makes a sweeping gesture with her hand to indicate the floor is Clarke’s.

“If you must, by all means.”

Clarke adjusts her seating position on Lexa’s stomach, the movement distributing her wetness that risks starting things up again. She appears grateful when Lexa instead props her knees up from behind to give Clarke a back to lean against.

While Clarke refocuses her thoughts, Lexa thinks she can get used to occupying Clarke’s new apartment in this way. Taking up space together as such. It’s not the original place she had imagined for them but it’s the start of a different future. A different dream.

There is nowhere else she would rather be in this moment and no better view than from the bottom, looking up.

Clarke’s next words spread warmth and brighten the outlook further.

“Lexa, each day that we have been apart, I have loved you more. Not less. I am still very much in love with you too.”

Clarke lets out a breath then looks away. Lexa follows her gaze to the ring sitting on the floor across the way, left on the other side of the room in the flurry of activity.

Patiently on standby to be picked up again.

Clarke takes Lexa’s hand into hers and lock eyes.

“I know you haven’t actually asked, and we’ll need to learn how to be less idiots about communicating before it does happen, but when the right time comes, the answer is, and will always be, _yes_.”

Lexa smiles.

“I’d like that.”

Entangling their fingers together, she affirms, reaching up for Clarke’s lips,

“I want that too.”

—

(It will not be today. And it may not be tomorrow. But some time in the perfectly imperfect future, that someday will come.

Until then, she will wait.

Clarke’s returned smile, and the kissing and lovemaking and making up that follow in the months and years ahead, are plenty to hold her over.

As she tastes the last of the cinnamon spice on Clarke’s lips, Lexa changes her mind again about Fall.

It _is_ her favourite season.

It is in the wanting and the waiting that she finds her peace.)

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. Happy Fall, my favourite season for layering warmth and love :)
> 
> ps, I hate cinnamon spice. So, consider this me taking one for the team.


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